


Most Ardently

by ciaconnaa



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, it's still in the 80s I guess, they're like 16ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-02 18:39:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13324161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciaconnaa/pseuds/ciaconnaa
Summary: (AU) // For the most part, Mike Wheeler enjoys his part-time job at Hawkins Junk Shop. He especially likes it when Overalls comes in.





	1. pride and prejudice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hannahberrie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahberrie/gifts).



For the most part, Mike Wheeler enjoys his part-time job at Hawkins Junk Shop.

The shop in question is basically three parts book store, two parts vintage clothing shop and just a big dash of…everything else. It’s not a very big store, but it is crammed to the max with stuff. There’s no rhyme or reason to the sorting, no matter how hard Mike tried to make it work (it was kind of the whole reason Mr. Newby hired him in the first place) so the books are all stacked and stuffed into buckling shelves. Behind the books are the three or four racks of clothes and then beyond that are various knick-knacks, thingamajigs, and whatchamacallits. It’s one of Hawkin’s best kept secrets and, for the most part, Mike Wheeler enjoys the constant sorting and repairing required to keep the store afloat.

He especially enjoys it when Overalls comes in.

Embarrassingly and in typical nerd fashion, Mike hasn’t had the nerve to ask for her name, even though they’ve had multiple conversations. And not just the kind where he says hi and she says hi back and they talk about the weather. Granted, it started out like that, but now they’ve upgraded to talking about _books._

Maybe it’s not so impressive considering that’s what she comes in for every week.

Her taste is….strange. And all over the place. Sometimes she straight up buys children’s books and other times she buys stuff like…. _Crime and Punishment,_ like she did last week. She mentioned that she wanted to try it and nothing more, and that….well, that was the extent of their conversation.

Okay. So maybe the really haven’t moved past the weather.

Mike’s in the middle of nailing in a top shelf on one of the wilting book shelves when the door chimes and, just his luck, Overalls walks in, typical outfit covered by what has to be her dad’s oversized coat with a frumpy looking maroon sweater poking out underneath the sleeves. Her short hair is wild, curls bouncing in every direction, he nose is bright red, her cheek has a bit of dirt on it and her upper lip has just a smidge of crusted blood from what Mike figures has to be a nose bleed.

She looks a bit of a mess, but it doesn’t stop Mike from being floored—he nearly falls off the ladder.

His yelp is more than emasculating as he clings to the ladder and bookshelf, a cheesy, beat up romance novel falling in casualty from his clumsiness. Overall’s brown doe eyes look up in alarm, only relaxing as soon as Mike is off from the ladder.

“Sorry about that,” he apologizes, coughing awkwardly into his hand. He thinks about shaking it, realizes that might be _weird,_ and wipes his suddenly sweaty palms on his jeans instead. Luckily, some of Nancy’s advice on how to be a gentleman kicks in and he grabs a tissue from the box he keeps on the front desk and hands it to her. “What can I help you with?”

She hits him with one of her pretty smiles and her eyes flicker to the books as she wipes her nose. “I need a few books.” She reaches into her front pocket of the overalls and pulls out a neatly folded piece of paper. “I was wondering if you had them?”

Mike frowns, but accepts the piece of paper, skimming the list. Seven books.  “You might be better off going to the mall, there’s a bigger bookstore there, I know they’ll have all of this,” he mumbles, but he’s already trying to remember where he put the copy of _The Catcher in the Rye_ someone brought in two weeks ago.

“Oh,” she says softly, and her disappointment is hard to miss. “Are there any here? The mall is pretty far for me, I…walk.”

“Yeah….yeah, there’s a few.” Mike says. Without thought, he stuffs the piece of paper in his mouth and climbs the ladder, aiming for the top shelf where he knows there are at least two copies of _Catch-22._ He finds the one in better condition and chucks the paperback down to rest on the check-out counter by the front door. “One down,” he says, before he scoots the ladder down and starts looking for a copy of _Heart of Darkness._ Her list flutters out of his mouth and to the ground where she picks it up. He feels bad for putting it in his mouth in the first place, but she doesn’t seem to mind. But he’s quick to move the conversation along before she can dwell on it.

“I’d read _Catch-22_ before this one; it’s way better,” he tells her, chucking the Conrad novel down—impressively, it lands on top of the other book.

“I figured,” the girl says, wrinkling her nose. “ _Heart of Darkness_ doesn’t sound like a very….happy book.”

“Well,” Mike looks down and shoots her a sympathetic smile. “Neither is _Catch-22_. But it’s….different. It’s got some humor to it, unlike all those other ones.”

Her disappointment only grows. “They’re _all_ sad?”

Oh no. Abort. “Not….sad-sad,” he starts to backtrack.  “You won’t cry or anything, I promise,” he rushes to assure, but maybe he shouldn’t do that. Ernest Hemingway’s poems are kind of…sad.

She looks a little less sad and Mike tallies it as a victory and moves on. “Anyway, what’s with the extensive list? You real behind on school reading?”

“Yes,” she answers immediately before her nose wrinkles again and Mike kind of _swoons._ “Sort of. But it’s not my fault.”

Mike is no stranger to procrastination. “Hey, no judgement here,” he says, holding his hands up in surrender—it’s a mistake and he immediately struggles to grab the ladder before he falls off.

She giggles, and he decides it’s worth almost breaking his ass for. “I….I’ve been homeschooled my whole life. My old dad didn’t do a good job of teaching.” she says quietly. “Jim has been working with me to catch up on stuff but I still….can’t go to high school with everyone else,” she admits with a bow of her head. “I’m too stupid.”

“Whoa, hey now,” Mike says quietly, looking down at her. He feels as every bit the part of Mr. Clarke as he tells her what Mike’s been told a thousand times. “You are _not stupid._ You’re just learning, and that takes time and practice. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

She looks back up at him with a shy smile. “Yeah?”

“Totally,” Mike agrees before he scoots the ladder down the rack to try and find _The Great Gatsby._ He passes a row of children’s books and guilt eats at his gut. He’d mentally teased her for the childish taste and all she was trying to do was _learn._ “So,” he says, thinking back to the book she bought the other week. “I’m guessing _Crime and Punishment_ didn’t go too well.”

Her cheeks tinge pink and she ducks her head again, gnawing on her lip. “It was really hard. And boring. I thought if I tried hard enough….”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Mike assures her. “I tried to read that book last summer, it is a _doozy.”_ He cringes at his word choice. Doozy? Who is he now, Will’s mom? “I mean,” he coughs and she giggles. “It’s impossible and boring as hell. You aren’t missing much.”

The conversation hits a dead end as Mike looks for all her books. _Catcher in the Rye_ , check. _The Great Gatsby_ , check.  _Catch-22_ , check. _Heart of Darkness,_ check. _As I Lay Dying_ , check.  _Anna Karenina_ ….errr, half check.

“Shit,” Mike swears, looking through the book with a frown. “I don’t know who in Hawkins had this but it won’t work.”

“Why not?”

He flips the book over and holds it down for her to see. “It’s still in Russian. Hasn’t been translated.”

“Oh,” she says softly, taking the book from his hands. “That’s okay. I’ll still take it.”

Mike snorts, giving her a wry grin. “What, you know Russian?”

“Yes,” she answers, and he’s….well, he doesn’t expect that. “I speak and understand it better than I can read it, but I can still do… okay. This will be good practice.”

“Whoa…” He’s in awe. Will’s older brother can _kind of_  speak French but he doesn’t know anyone who can speak another language. “How’d you learn Russian?”

“My old dad spoke it.” She says without looking him in the eye. Her finger traces the hardback cover of Anna Karenina. “He made me learn it.”

“Hah,” Mike snorts. “Your old man made you learn Russian but didn’t let you read _Charlotte’s Web_?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “He wasn’t very nice. He had a strict plan for me.”

“Sounds like a Russian spy if you ask me,” he teases, expecting the girl to falter and stutter and assure him that no, there are no Russian spies in the middle of nowhere, aka Hawkins Indiana.

But instead she continues to look at anywhere but him, her feet scuttling on the ground and _yeah_ Mike’s a little more than uncomfortable. An awkward cough and a subject change are definitely in order.

“At least Jim seems nice,” Mike offers, and the girl’s head raises, her smile crooked and soft.

“He is. We yell at each other a lot,” she admits, laughing like the whole thing is ridiculous. “But he’s nice. I’m really glad he adopted me.”

There’s only one Jim in town who adopted an older kid in Hawkins in the last several years. Mike does some quick math. “Hold up, are you Jim Hopper’s daughter? Jane?”

She pulls a face but doesn’t deny it. “Yeah, I’m Jane.”

“Oh. Uh, that's cool! The chief he's...he's good. I’m Mike,” he says, and this time he does make an effort to actually shake her hand—her fingers are knobby, cold and chapped, but it doesn’t make him want to hold her hand any less. The sleeve of her oversized sweater and jacket slip down her forearm and he sees a small tattoo-looking number on her wrist.

“Eleven?”

Her eyes go wide like he’s just said some secret code word before Mike points to her wrist. She relaxes once she notices, but hastens to cover up her arm with her sweater once more.

“Is that a real tattoo?”

“Yeah,” she admits, biting her lip nervously. “My old dad gave it to me when I was a little kid.”

He really doesn’t like how this is playing out. “That’s…”

_That’s so fucked up who does that oh my god that's some experiment shit that's some spy shit that is definitely the last piece of the puzzle her dad was totally arrested for being a Russian spy and that’s why she’s adopted oh my god oh my god oh my god Dustin would flip—_

“Awful, I know,” she finishes, saving him from saying something completely inappropriate. “But it was my name for years. I’m still getting used to Jane.”

And because his bid dumb mouth doesn’t have a filter to stop his big dumb brain, he says, “You could always go by El. Short for Eleven.”

While he contemplates climbing the ladder and then jumping to severe injury, Jane tilts her head, curious, before her smile grows slow like a vine on her face. She’s so pretty when she smiles.

“El. I like that.”

Mike feels his cheeks heat and ducks his head, looking at the stack of books she’s gotten. They have 6 out of 7 that she wanted, which isn’t bad considering it’s a second hand junk shop. But Mike wants to get her a really good book. One she’ll really, really like. “You know what? Read this,” he decides, going back behind the front counter for a box he hasn’t had the chance to shelf yet. “My sister Nancy really likes it. My mom said she liked it, too. You like reading about romance?”

That gets her nodding her head, her face lit up with joy. “Romance? It’s a happy book?”

He slides the copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ her way. “Pretty much. It’s got a happy ending, I promise. Girls really like it.”

“Okay!” she chirps, delightfully stacking the book on top of the others. “I’ll read it. Thank you.”

He’s about to ring her up when a loud howling makes him jump; the wind right now has really picked up, making creepy whistling noises and making him shiver just listening to it. He stares out the window to see the snow has already started to pick up and he frowns, thinking about how she mentioned she walks everywhere.

“Are you in any rush?”

She lifts her head from the book—Pride and Prejudice—already eager to get started. It’s kinda cute. “Uh, not really.” She rubs at her nose with her palm and God, Mike doesn’t think she can get any cuter, really. “I just have to be back by 8:00.”

He looks at the crooked, almost falling clock on the wall (another repair he needs to get to this week) and notices he’s meant to close up shop in twenty minutes. “If you stick around for a few more minutes, I can give you a ride home so you don’t have to walk.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” she shakes her head. “I live kind of out of the way of...everything.”

Mike frowns. “But you walk?”

She shrugs.

“It’s cold. I wouldn’t want you to get another nose bleed,” He goes on. She seems confused, but nods. “If you want to walk, that’s fine, but it’s not an inconvenience. I don’t mind.”

El taps her foot on the squeaky floorboards, looking anxious, before she agrees with a mumble and a shy smile.

If asked, Mike would be embarrassed to admit he _definitely_ rushes to close up shop, having no qualms with locking up five minutes before 6:00. Mr. Newby won’t mind. He checks her out in record time while she browses the rest of the store. In the end as they’re heading out, he lends El his hat, promising he doesn’t have lice with an awkward ramble and luckily she laughs, which is good, because Mike kind of wants to kill himself for being so uncool.

Lice? Lice! Who tells the pretty girl about lice!?

His uncool streak doesn’t get any better when he slips and nearly busts his ass on some ice by the passenger’s door—he had rushed ahead to try and open the door and of course, in typical Wheeler fashion, fell for what had be nine straight seconds, but he never hit the ground. He doesn’t know if it’s divine intervention or his stubbornness to try and not look like an ass in front of Hawkin’s prettiest teen girl, but he manages to keep his skinny stick legs upright as he clutches to his car for dear life--there's got to be a Mike Wheeler sized hand print on the side now.

“You good?” El asks, a small trickle of blood falling from her nose.

“Yeah, but uh, you got—“ he reaches forward and thumbs underneath her nose, almost wiping it completely clean. Her cheeks redden, from the cold or embarrassment he doesn’t know, but Mike simply smiles and opens the door to the Jeep Wagoner for her. “It’s okay. My friend Will gets nose bleeds when it’s cold all the time. No big deal.”

She nods, her smile back, and climbs into the car.

Mike shuts the door with a hard slam, because it’s old and stubborn and rushes to get to the driver’s side. Another mistake. Because Murphy’s Law is real and nothing in life can go his way, Mike slips on another quick-formed patch of ice and falls like something straight out of a cartoon where the character slips on a banana peel, landing straight on his ass, his head getting a good whack in the process.

Perfect. She’ll never go on a date with him now.

“Mike!” he hears, his name muffled through the car before the door opens and she’s rushing to help him to his feet. He realizes too late he might have worried her when he chose to lay on the ground unmoving, staring at the sky while he thinks about what he’s done in life to deserve this kind of bad karma.

“Are you okay?” El asks, leaning down and tapping his cheek with the back of her palm— _cold._ Where are her gloves? He needs to give her his gloves.

“What are you—stop it!” she hisses, when she sees him moving at a snail place to take off his gloves. Or wait, did he say all that out loud? “I’m fine. You’re the one with ice down his shirt. Are you _okay_?”

“Just dying of embarrassment.”

She doesn’t look appeased. “Can you get up?”

“No, I’m pinned down by the weight of my own mortification.”

He starts laughing and El smacks him in the chest as she helps him up, dusting the snow off his jacket and out of his hair. “You hit your head. This isn’t _funny.”_

He smiles down at her. Mike’s one of the tallest, if not the tallest, in his grade, and even though El is a bit on the tall side as well, he’s still got a few inches on her. Her hair brushes against his nose as she continues to dust him off and then zips his jacket up, fiddling with his scarf and putting his gloves on his hands. She’s all worked up and _worried_ that Mike feels a little bad with messing with her, but it’s not enough to stop him.

“What a shame,” he says softly. “For I dearly love to laugh.”

Mike’s definitely whacked his head, his brain is probably rotting in the cold, if that’s somehow possible, and there’s definitely no way she understands that he’s just quoted the most girlish book he’s ever known.

But her brow softens and she smiles at him anyway.

 

 

* * *

 

He’s left her his phone number on the last page of _Pride and Prejudice_.

Ten days later, El calls.

 


	2. frog and toad are friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heard y'all wanted a sequel here u go!!!!

_“You’re Elizabeth Bennet.”_

Mike’s at a loss for words as he clutches the phone closer to him, giving his family at the dinner table a wary glance—they aren’t paying him any mind, all assuming that it’s Dustin, Lucas, or Will on the other line.  “One more time?”

_“You’re Elizabeth Bennet. You used her line.”_

His face immediately flushes red as he realizes who’s on the phone. No greeting or clarification that it’s Mike. Just straight to the point. “Oh. Yeah, I did.”

_“You said it was a girly book. But you read it.”_

Mike snorts. It’s not like he’s the poster boy for masculinity in this town. He’s all gangly, pale and a bit bow-legged if he’s being honest. And on more than one occasion he’s been called “Miss” from behind. So really. Reading girly books is the least of his worries.

The sounds of eating from the table stop as El giggles over the phone. His face flushes.

Okay, _how_ much of that did he say out loud?

Nancy, who is home from the weekend visiting for the first time in God knows how long, starts to snicker. Of course the first time a girl ever phones his house, Nancy is in town to witness it. “Who are you talking to?” she giggles.

“Bite me, Nancy,” he hisses.

_“Nancy?”_

“My older sister,” he explains, trying to walk as far away from the kitchen as the chorded phone will let him. “So….you finished the book.”

_“I did. You were right, I really liked it.”_

“Good! Good, that’s uh…good.”

_“Mmm.”_

“Uh-huh.”

_“Right.”_

“So…” he coughs, feeling even more awkward than he did when he slipped in the snow in front of her. “What can I help you with?”

She’s not laughing, per say, but Mike can hear her smile, if that’s possible. “ _You aren’t at work. You don’t have to treat me like a customer.”_

“O-oh. Right, sorry.”

 _“That’s okay,”_ she says softly. _“You left me your number.”_

Nancy is too curious for her own good; Mike can hear her chair scratch against the floor before she comes over to try and eavesdrop. “I did,” he grunts, dodging Nancy’s attempt to glue herself to his side.

_“So…that means you wanted to talk to me again, right?”_

“O-of course! Of course, yes. If you wanted to.”

_“I called.”_

Nancy leans in and whispers into his ear, “This is the part where you ask her on a date, dweeb.”

“Fuck _off,_ Nancy!” he hisses, pulling the phone far away in hopes that El won’t hear a word of it. “Look, El. I would really love to talk to you again. But because my terrible sister,” Nancy leans in, trying to hear whatever El will respond with, and it starts a pinching war between the two of them. “Is eavesdropping with her face literally pressed up against mine—Ow! Quit it!—I can’t chat for long. Are you busy tomorrow?”

 _“Yes,”_ El says, and his heart sinks a little. “ _But I can do something on Saturday? Is that okay?”_

“That sounds good.” As annoying as Nancy is, it _is_ preventing him from worrying over what he’s going to say and essentially choking on his own tongue. “I can pick you up around lunch time, if that’s okay.”

_“I’d really like that, Mike. Thanks for leaving your number.”_

He absolutely _flames,_ and Nancy lets out a girlish squeal. “Thanks for calling,” he mumbles. “I gotta go. See you later.”

Before the phone even hits the stupid receiver, Nancy pokes his cheek and taunts, “When did you start liking girls?”

“I’ve always liked girls,” he defends

“But like, a _specific_ girl.”

“Since….none of your business, Nance.”

“Mooooom,” Nancy sings, heading back to the table to finish dinner. “Mike gave his phone number to a girl. And she actually called him.”

“I hate you,” he glowers, sitting in his seat as well. He gives Holly a pat on the head. “You’ve always been a better sister than her, don’t forget that.”

His little sister grins, but in the end, she’s still one of his sisters and she just has to ask. “Who were you talking to?”

And because she asks politely and he’d much rather explain this to Holly than his mother directly, he answers her. “Jane.”

“Is she pretty?”

“She is.”

“Good,” Holly decides, stabbing a piece of her broccoli with her fork. “Your girlfriend should be pretty.”

“I’ve never heard you mention a Jane,” his mother says, her voice dripping with curiosity and approval. “Is she in one of your classes?”

“No, she’s….she’s homeschooled?” He explains. Why it sounds like a question, he doesn’t know. “She comes to the shop to buy books, that’s how I met her.”

“Homeschooled?” His mother’s brow furrows, but then relaxes as the facts all come together. Small towns talk, and in the end, everyone kind of knows everyone—even the people that haven’t even met. “Oh, Jane Hopper? The chief’s daughter?”

“That’s the one.”

“I heard she came from a real bad way, is that true?”

“I wouldn’t know; it’s none of my business.”

His mom simply shrugs in response, but the matter is luckily dropped. Sometimes the gossip around town is interesting, and usually it’s harmless, but with this….he doesn’t want to perpetuate it, any of it, on his part. He likes El and this is her _life._ Her past is none of his business.

“So,” Nancy asks, voice pitched up an octave. “Where are you going on your hot date?”

Mike throws a handful of mashed potatoes her way, smiling when some of it gets in her hair.

 

* * *

 

The hot date in question turns out to be at the Palace Arcade.

Mike’s a little embarrassed of his choice when he walks in and most of the people playing are….twelve year olds, but El seems to look excited. She seems dazzled by all the lights and dinging machines and even if it’s a geeky date, it seems to be a good choice.

“What’s your favorite arcade game, El?” he asks, bumping shoulders with her. He resists the urge to pick off a piece of lent on her pink sweater. “El’s okay, right? You said you liked the nickname, but I can call you Jane—“

“El is good, thanks.” She smiles. “And I don’t know, I’ve never been to an arcade,” she admits, but her eyes can’t stop wandering. “Is that one fun?” she asks, pointing off to a pinball machine.

It’s a good newbie choice, that’s for sure. He isn’t going to have to spend a lot of time explaining it. “Yeah, it is, come on.”

He puts the quarters in while she marvels over the machine, startling when it whirrs to life with bells and whistles, making them both laugh. He tells her the basics—keep the ball up, use the levers, get as many points as you can. El nods and then she’s off; her concentration is intense, painting her features into a stoic Mona Lisa like smile that Mike thinks is really adorable.

“Are you sure you’re not just hustling me?” he asks when after three tries, her score is just a few points shy from making the top ten score board. “You’re really good at this.”

She wipes at her nose—another nose bleed—and gives him a smile. “Beginners luck.”

“Jesus, El,” he laughs, sacrificing his own sleeve to wipe the rest of the blood away. She blushes and laughs, eyes crinkling shut. “You get nose bleeds a lot?”

“Yeah, always have. They don’t hurt. And it’s not like it’s a lot of blood.”

Mike shrugs, rolling up his soiled sleeve, and then the other to match. “That’s fair. So! New game. Let’s see….ooh, you’ll like this one,” he says, grabbing her wrist and gently dragging her a few feet away to where the Frogger machine is.

“Frogger…” she says slowly. “That’s not a _word.”_

“So? Don't be dissing the frogs. Your last name is _Hopper_ , for crying out loud. _”_ He puts in a few quarters and pulls her closer beside him, going first to show her how to play it. “It’s the frog’s name. A frog named Frogger. It’s _cute.”_

She hums, clearly unconvinced as she watches him start out level 1. “So the point is to…..”

“….Not get run over.  Or drown. Pretty basic.” He shrugs. He gets past level 1 quickly, like he usually does. But Frogger always brings back old memories for him. “You know, when I was in middle school, these kids used to call me frog face.”

El pouts. “Why?”

“I’m guessing it’s my uncanny resemblance to Mister Frogger over here,” he teases, earning him a slight punch to the shoulder. “I always kinda wish they went with Frogger, you know? A little more clever. And appropriate, considering I’m an advanced level nerd.”

“You do _not_ have a frog face,” El defends, poking his cheek. “Frog’s don’t have _freckles.”_

“Ehh, they kind of do. Some of them have spots.”

“Those are toads.”

“Frogs and toads are sort of the same thing,” he says, just as he accidentally misses a log and jumps into the water. Fuck. He moves aside to let El try.

“They’re very different in the books,” she assures him, and instantly, Mike knows what she’s talking about—having a little sister comes in handy.

“You mean from _Frog and Toad Are Friends_?” he grins.

She must instantly regret the mention of the children’s series judging by how Frogger gets run over by a truck and her cheeks flame red. “I…like those books.”

“Me too,” Mike agrees. “I really like Toad.”

“I really like Frog.”

They’re talking about _children’s books_ , but Mike’s smile has never felt so perfect on his own face. “Yeah, yeah he’s good,” he whispers.

They continue to play Frogger for a bit before they move on to Pac-Man and then Dig-Dug. Once he’s down a few bills, enough to pay for some snacks or hot chocolates, he asks her if she wants to go to Benny’s diner.

“Oh, Benny’s! That’s my favorite. Jim and I go every week.”

So then they’re at Benny’s with two hot chocolates, a big basket of fries, and a grilled cheese sandwich split between them. Mike is happy to discover that El also enjoys dipping her fries in honey mustard instead of ketchup, and she has no etiquette when it comes to eating them too. She isn’t a disgusting eater by any means, but she doesn’t care about getting her fingers greasy or eating one single dainty fry at a time. She eats like Dustin, and that makes him smile.

“So, when did you read _Pride and Prejudice_?” she asks, sucking the salt and grease off her thumb. “You quoted it like you just read it.”

“It was actually one summer when I was in sixth grade,” he admits. “My friends Dustin, Lucas and Will, they all had summer plans and I was the only one stuck in Hawkins. I was so bored I thought that it’d be better to actually hang out with Nancy as opposed to always fighting with her. I thought if I did something that _she_ liked—like, reading _Pride and Prejudice_ —that she’d do something that _I’d_ like, like go to the arcade or ride bikes.”

“Did it work?”

“No,” Mike says flatly, and El laughs. “No, it didn’t. But it was okay because I actually…liked the book. And one day at the table, after she’d learned I snuck the book out of her room and read it, she’d made some teasing comment about me. You know, the usual. Mom told her to shut it, like usual. Then she looked me dead in the eye and said in the worst British accent, “ _What a shame, for I dearly love to laugh_.”

El leans in, elbows on the table, and smiles.

“And I know she was making fun of me but I just thought it was so _funny._ We didn’t really hang out a lot that summer, we still constantly fought but after one of us would say to quit picking on the other we’d always say _What a shame, for I dearly love to laugh._ So that’s why I remember that quote.”

“That’s nice,” El says softly. “It must be nice to have sisters.”

“Oh, so you were an only child?”

“Kinda?” El shrugs. “My old dad was a foster parent, so there were a lot of kids in and out of the house. Eleven, actually. And I was….well, I was number eleven.”

The tattoo on her wrist suddenly has a more horrifying meaning than just some kooky communist spy theory, and fear and guilt tighten his chest.

“I shared a room with this girl for two or three years when I was little. She was number Eight, but she left when I was still pretty little. She was the closest thing I had to a sibling, I guess.”

Mike nods and thinks back to his mother’s comment at the dinner table. “I don’t mean to pry, you know,” he blurts out, and she tilts her head, curious. “You don’t have to tell me about your old dad if you don’t want to. I know….you said he wasn’t nice. It must not be pleasant to remember.”

“It’s okay,” she shrugs. “I mean, what happened to me isn’t, but….it’s also okay. My therapist says some bit of acceptance is necessary to move on. So it’s okay. You can ask whatever.”

He snags a fry and pops it into his mouth. It had way too much honey mustard on it. “How about you…just tell me what you want. I’ll listen, no matter how little or much you want to tell me.”

Her smile slants to the side before she weathers her chapped lip between her teeth. “Okay. Thanks, Mike.”

“I do have one question though.”

“Yeah?”

“….can I have the last fry?”

“No,” she says, grabbing it and popping into her mouth with a shit-eating grin.

He’s not even mad.

 

* * *

 

It’s late afternoon when he drops her back off at her house. The freezing wind has really picked up and as much as he doesn’t want to see her leave, he also doesn’t want to force her to get out of the car and walk to her front step, no matter how short the distance.

“I had a really good time,” she says. “I liked the arcade.”

“Good. That’s…that’s good,” he whispers, his eyes roaming her face. Bare of any make up, her lashes short and stubby framing big, brown eyes, a small blemish on her chin and she looks so damn _cute._

“Mike?”

He’s zoned out, but it’s okay because she’s still in the car. Her seatbelt is unbuckled and she’s got her body turned toward him and he knows he should do something, Dustin is in his head giving bad romantic advice telling him to _do something—_

“I don’t really know what to say,” Mike admits softly, his smile growing despite his nervousness. Because yes, he’s nervous, his heart is beating a million miles an hour, but she’s so damn cute that it’s all okay. “So I’m just going to…”

He leans over and presses a slow kiss to her cheek.

When he pulls back his mental worries that his lips are chapped and must feel like sandpaper on her skin melt away. Her face is bright with happiness, complete with flushed cheeks and her eyes are a bit wild, darting every which way across his face before she leans in and kisses him, right on the mouth.

It _does_ feel like sandpaper, but he doesn’t mind at all.

It’s short and sweet, like two little kids who don’t know what they’re doing (they don’t know what they’re doing) but it’s the best moment of Mike’s teenage life thus far.

“Bye, Mike. I’ll call you again? Maybe when I finish my next book?”

“Read fast, please,” Mike blurts out before he groans in embarrassment. “I mean—“

“I’ll read fast.”

They smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> does she have powers? did she use them to cheat at pinball? you decide


	3. webster's dictionary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all the positive response was really inspiring so here you go! part 3! I hope you like it

“I like your room.”

El gives him a grin before she heads off to put on a record—she doesn’t have an extensive collection but she looks proud of it, all of them sorted neatly in a bin next to the player, all set up on a fold-up card table. “Do you like Jackson Browne?”

Mike doesn’t have an opinion one way or another so he nods, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket and wandering over to her desk, where she has a few photos—three to be exact. The first two seem to be recent but the last one is from a while ago—she’s smaller and frailer and her hair is so _short_. But he’d know that smile anywhere.

The music starts playing as she comes to stand beside him, lifting on her toes slightly to rest her chin on his shoulder, watching him pick up the last picture. “That was around the time Jim found me. I was twelve, I think.”

“Found?” he blinks. “….and, think?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I had run away from Brenner and I had been on my own for about a month. I was living in and around the woods. It was cold. His house was warm.”

Mike nods silently, at a loss at what to say. He promised he wouldn’t pry, so instead he says, “I like the short hair. You look…”

“…bitchin,” she supplies confidently, but she soon loses her straight face and dissolves into giggles.

“Maybe with the right outfit,” Mike agrees, laughing along with her. He taps the framed photo. “Not this Elmer Fudd looking thing.”

El’s laughter stops and her brow furrows. “Who?”

“He was a cartoon hunter, he wore that hat that Jim’s got and the colors and the gun and the _woods…._ it reminds me of Elmer Fudd.”

And just like that, her features relax. “Oh, like a Fuddy Duddy? That’s why they call him that?”

Mike lets out a strangled gasp of a laugh. “ _Fuddy Duddy?”_

“Yes!” El squeaks out in defense. “Jim told me—stop _laughing!”_ she demands, but her own giggles betray her as she slaps him with the oversized sleeve of her sweater. She never gets around to elaborating. Instead, she hops up on her bed and pats the light pink quilt beside her; Mike doesn’t hesitate to join her.

She stretches her body to reach a bottle of nail polish she has on her bedside table—there’s only two bottles, one black and one pink. The black one falls to the ground but she nabs the pink before it falls, tapping the bottle to her wrist before she hands it over to Mike.

Nancy has made him paint her nails (and painted his too, unfortunately) several times before when they were younger so when Mike had told El that yes, he had a steady hand and could paint her nails no problem, she had gotten adorably excited. It’s partly why she invited him inside for the first time on this rainy Sunday afternoon.

“What does _your_ room look like?” El asks as Mike begins with her pinky finger, painting it a soft pink in one delicate stroke.

“As nerdy as I do,” he admits. “Star wars stuff, dinosaur books, all of my science fair trophies,” he grins. “Plus a bunch of drawings that Will has done—there’s even a canvas painting he gave me for my last birthday.”

“Canvas?”

“Like your shoes,” he nods to where her beaten white sneakers lay by her bedroom door. His finds himself holding his breath a moment as he carefully used his nail to wipe some of the polish that’s stuck into her cuticle. “Anyway, it’s really good. A landscape. I should show you sometime.”

The quiet settles over them, the soundtrack of the rain pattering against the old windows of her house soothing and melodious. And then, her voice chimes in, cracked and a little broken like a clap of thunder, but with none of the bite. “Do you think Will would like me?”

“Will? Oh, yeah. You two would really get along. He’s really quiet like you are, even if he’s not as blunt. But he’s super nice.” He looks up to give her a reassuring smile. “I can invite you to hang out with all of us, if you’d like.”

“Who is all of us?”

“Will, Dustin, Lucas, and Max.” He shrugs. “We don’t do much, just go for drives or play games like D&D—“

“What’s D&D?”

Mike’s cheeks tint the same color as the polish—he finishes up with one hand and beckons for the other. “Dungeons and Dragons? It’s this kind of role-playing game. It’s…pretty nerdy. Max doesn’t really like playing. She’d love to talk to you instead.”

El wrinkles her nose. “I’m not very good at girly stuff, as you can tell. She probably won’t like me.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Max is less girly than you are. She swears like a sailor and honestly, I bet Will painted that perpetual scowl on her face.”

She smirks. “She sounds like Jim.”

“Then you’d get along just fine, won’t you?”

She ducks her head as Mike finishes painting her nails. The rain continues to pour down, the noise moments away from becoming uncomfortably loud instead of calm.

As he’s screwing the cap back on the polish she sighs. “You’re my first friend. I feel like I got lucky and it won’t be so easy the next time.”

Her confession is…a lot of things to him. On one hand, Mike would have never suspected that she had been socially isolated her entire life, that she had never been around people, let alone people her own age. She’s kind and thoughtful and while she has an innocence about her, the maturity in how she sees and accepts her limitations doesn’t make him think she’s inept or childish. But on the other hand….he does see the gaps. He sees the gaps in her education, in her pop-culture knowledge, and yes, in her social behavior, even if those gaps aren’t blaringly strange. They’ve only hung out a few times but Mike is so drawn to her—he feels a connection to her despite not knowing her very well. He wants the best for her. He wants to help her. He wants her in his life.

So yes, her confession is a lot of things: her fears and dread, sure, but it’s not all truth.

“Give yourself more credit. Just because you haven’t had many opportunities to make friends doesn’t mean you can’t have a lot of them. My friends will like you. I'll introduce you and I'll go just fine. You didn’t get _lucky_ with me. It’s just really easy to like you and be your friend, because you’re so….”

She frowns. “So what?”

He reaches forward and taps her nose gently with the nail polish bottle. “Good. There are better words, I just can’t…” he sighs, eyes roaming her face and his own breaks out with a dopey smile. “I just can’t think of them. There’s too many. But you’re good, that I know.”

Her smile crinkles her eyes and wrinkles her nose.

“Can I paint yours?” she asks, reaching for the other polish that fell to the ground. “I can do black.”

“Do whatever,” he chuckles. He knows where his mom keeps the polish remover at home. “Both, if you want to go real nuts.”

She starts painting every other nail with the black. Every so often she’d look up at the walls of her room, but Mike can’t figure out for the life of him what she’s looking at—all her walls are completely bare, covered only in chipped paint.

“Landscape.”

“Huh?”

“What does your….landscape look like? On your wall.”

Mike tries not to squirm as El wets the pad of her finger and carefully smudges away some black pail polish that’s landed on his knuckle—she’s ruined one of her own nails in the process, to impatient to wait for them to dry. He suspects that’s the real problem she has with painting her own nails. “It’s actually the quarry.”

“Quarry.”

“Yeah, a—“

“I know,” She stops short with an equally short, frustrated sigh. “I know what a quarry is. What _the_ quarry is. I used to go all the time.”

Even if El’s been isolated all her life, including her homeschooling with Jim Hopper, Mike still isn’t surprised. The woods by the quarry aren’t far from her house at all, and besides, the trails and roads are really scenic, especially in the summer and fall, and a lot of kids from school like to hang around there: make-out cliff is no joke.

But Mike and his friends always go in the winter. No one wants to make the cold hike there just to see a bunch of bare trees and some blue water. But that way, it’s peaceful. That way, he and his friends can actually hang out and be alone. It’s how Will had the time and quiet to paint the scene from the highest point last year.

“Yeah?” Mike mumbles, silently cursing that he told her she could use the black polish. He has a feeling it’s going to be a bitch to get off. “Jim take you?”

“No, Brenner.”

The room suddenly feels very, very cold.

She’s never named him, not until now. In his mind he’s been calling him Professor Evil or Doctor Madman. Brenner….it’s such a normal sounding name. He doesn’t like it.

He watches as she puts the black polish away and opens the pink once more, never once looking up to meet his gaze. “Jump.”

Mike tries to swallow the golf-ball sized lump in his throat, but it doesn’t quite go away. “Jump?”

“He tried to make me jump,” El says tiredly, like she’s explaining some exasperating behavior that is no more severe then something like Holly poking him incessantly on his side. “To test me.”

“To….test you,” Mike repeats back. “Test you for what?”

When she looks up, there’s a bit of fear etched into her features, tucked into the pinched corners of her mouth and hiding in the brown of her eyes, but all she does is suck her teeth and click her tongue before looking back down at the task at hand. “I don’t know. Each time…I could never make myself jump.” She shrugs.

“Well, yeah…you would have _died.”_

Her eyes flicker up, expression unreadable, before she goes back to butchering this paint job. “Right. I would have….died.”

Mike nods, as if he’s happy that yes, she understand she made the right decision because she _would have died_ but El still looks….unsure.

“At first, I didn’t know it was a quarry. I didn’t even know how far away it was from Brenner’s—he always blindfolded me when he drove me there, took it off right at the edge. But I came across it after I had run away. Jim found me there, by the cliff. Asked me what I was doing.”

Mike doesn’t know if he should ask, but… “What _were_ you doing?”

She finishes with the last nail. “I tried to explain, I wasn’t very good at it though. I didn’t know how to speak about this kind of stuff yet. I understood English but I had barely ever spoken it. It was a strange…”

“…Discord?” he supplies.

She nods, trusting his word choice. “Anyway, he asked me a bunch of questions. ‘Hey, Kid,’”, she impersonates in what Mike assumes should be Jim, but sounds more like a bad Clint Eastwood. It’s kind of cute. “’What the hell do you think you’re doing standing there, huh?’ Of course, I wouldn’t answer, and he got frustrated. Really frustrated. So, Jim took me home, gave me something to eat, let me take a bath, and then he grabbed a dictionary. Asked me to look up suicide.”

He as itch to wring his hands, to smudge his hands into a black and pink mess, but El grabs hold of his fingers and held them tight, tight, tight.

“The word didn’t fit. It wasn’t the feeling,” And Mike lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, feeling dizzy. “He kept asking me to look up words, I can’t remember all of them, but none of them were right. They were cold words, dark words….it wasn’t the feeling.

“After he went to bed I kept looking up words randomly, trying to find one. And then….I found it.”

“What was it?”

She smiles. “Admire. I was…admiring the view. It was the first time I had been there, and no one was asking me to jump. It was…peaceful.”

He throws caution to the wind and reaches out to cup her cheek with his palm—only a sliver of stray pink polish ends up streaking her skin, and he calls it a success considering how badly she had painted his nails in the first place.

“I’m glad you didn’t jump.”

El laughs a little. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

She leans forward, whispering, “I wanted to jump. I didn’t want to die, but…I wanted to jump. He had asked me so many times but now that no one was making me…I _was_ a little curious. Is that weird?”

Mike wrinkles his nose, rubs his thumb along her cheek. “A little. But I understand. Kinda. Not really. But yeah. It’s fine.”

El laughs, pulling away so his hand falls, leaving his hand feeling cold. “Well, I’m a little weird,” she says by means of explanation.

“I knew that already,” Mike teases. “Don’t worry, it’s endearing.”

She gives him a look, and he thinks for a moment she might need a definition but then—

“Endearing. To make dear or beloved, to manifest or evoke emotion. ” El recites like Webster himself, giving him a wry smile. “It was one of the words I looked up that night. Or maybe the next night. I don’t know. I spent hours looking at that thing. Days. It was my….my first book.  And for a long time, it was my favorite book.”

He picks up her hands, looking to see what she messed up and if he can fix it, “What replaced it?” he asks absently.

“ _What a shame, for I dearly love to laugh.”_

His head snaps up.

“That book is good and…it has your number in it. It gave me my first friend. Jim is great, he’s like my dad, he takes care of me and that dictionary means a lot for me, personally but….you are my first friend.”

Mike smiles, leaning forward to press a kiss to her mouth.

It’s short and sweet, as are the others after as they slowly chase each other’s lips in delicate movements. His hands, still wet with polish, get color on her light grey sweater as he pulls her closer to him by her waist. Her own arms wrap around his neck and play with his hair before her fingers simply brush up and down the side of his neck with a feather-like touch.

“More….than a friend,” she adds.

He kisses her again, sloppy and pathetic due to how wide and silly his smile is, and wonders if he’ll always be fond of the stench of polish for as long as he lives.


	4. the great gatsby

They’re all in the Wheeler basement on a Saturday night, finishing up homework assignments and projects like they always do so they have Sundays to play D&D when Dustin notices.

“Is that….is that _nail polish?”_

Lucas and Will both stop their conversation about their English assignment to join Dustin in his incredulous stare at Mike’s hands. Despite his best efforts, Mike was _not_ able to get all the nail polish off his fingers—the black was particularly stubborn—and now the color stained his cuticle and left a tint on every nail.

“Yes,” Mike answers with confidence because really, there’s no way he’s going to get out of being teased for this so he might as well own it.

Lucas points a finger Will’s way, his brows drawn together in confusion. Will lets out a huff of a laugh and holds his hands up in surrender. “Wasn’t me. I don’t paint my nails black.”

“It was Jane,” Holly says and Mike has never so immediately regretted letting Holly hang out with them while they work. He glares at her as she lies on the floor, working on a drawing with some of Will’s colored pencils.

“Who is _Jane?”_  Dustin asks, his smile mischievous.

Holy is nonplussed, unaware of the valuable information she’s just _giving away._ “His girlfriend.”

 _“Girlfriend!?”_ All three boys shout.

Mike rolls his eyes. “She’s not my _girlfriend,”_ he says leaning forward to lightly shove Holly’s side; she kicks him gently in the shin in return. “She’s just….someone I’ve been hanging out with,” he admits with a sigh.

“Like, dating?”

“Sort of, maybe.”

Dustin already looks exasperated. “Well did you _kiss her?”_

“How is that any of your business?” he asks, but he answers anyway because they’re all just fucking _staring_ at him. “Yes, okay? Can we move on?”

As Lucas and Dustin sputter and shout and fail to participate in a proper conversation, Will knocks shoulders with Mike, giving him an encouraging smile. “That’s great, Mike. Where’d you meet her?”

“Yeah, we don’t know a Jane,” Dustin pouts. “There isn’t one in our grade.”

Lucas pulls a face. “You aren’t dating a freshman are you?”

Dustin gasps. “You aren’t dating a _senior_ are you?”

“Yeah, like Mike could get a senior girlfriend.”

“Listen, I didn’t think Mike could get any kind of girlfriend.”

Holly answers for him. “She doesn’t go to your school. She’s homeschooled. She’s Chief Hopper’s daughter.”

“Jane Hopper?” Lucas’ eyes bug out. “The elusive Jane Hopper? You met her? And what more, you’re dating her?”

Dustin waggles his eye brows and does that dumb purring noise he makes. “Is she hot?”

“ _Dustin,”_ Mike groans, burying his face in his hands. “Don’t we all have something better to do than talk about Jane?”

Will is straight faced. “Absolutely not.” So much for Will’s undying loyalty. But he supposes if it was someone else in their group that was starting to date he’d be curious too. Hell, when Max and Lucas started dating Mike knows he was just as annoying as they all are right now. “What’s she like?” Will asks.

For the first time, Mike realizes that El is….kind of difficult to describe. But he does his best. “She’s….quiet. Really quiet. But she’s really nice. She might even be nicer than Will.”

Dustin and Lucas let out a frighteningly synchronized snort. “Not possible,” they say together.  Will just rolls his eyes.

“Um, let’s see….she wears overalls like, almost every day. Her hair is curly and kind of short. I think she’s trying to grow it out, she said it was shaved for years—“

“She _shaved_ her head?” Dustin gawks. “Did she have like….cancer?”

“Oh my god,” Lucas whispers, “Did Hopper adopt a cancer kid?”

“That’s like, a fucking movie script, considering what happened to—“

“Guys,” Mike cuts, his voice probably a little too harsh. He feels like the conversation is derailing quickly, and he doesn’t want to jump from tangent to tangent and end up sharing more about El than he’s at liberty to share. There’s nothing more awkward than meeting a bunch of people that seem to already know everything about you. So if Mike’s going to keep his promise….”Look,” he says softly, “She’ll be at the junk shop tomorrow if you’re so curious….come down and meet her for yourself, okay?”

They all give him identical, shit-eating grins and he regrets his life choices immediately.

 

* * *

 

His friends end up opening the shop with him.

Lucas drags Max with him even though she insists she _does not care_ about Mike’s new dweeby girlfriend. A few years ago, those kinds of words would have upset him, but Mike’s learned to shrug it off; her native language is sarcasm, and all in all Max shows she cares through actions, not words.

The four of them raid the junk shop as Mike attempts to fix yet _another_ shelf. Will, bless his heart, tries to help, but the ladder they have isn’t the best and really shouldn’t support two people, so Will mans to the front desk by sitting atop it, reading an old comic book he found squeezed in between old copies of crime novels that haven’t been touched since they were dropped off. Lucas is off fiddling with an old boom box, trying to see if he can get it to work right then and there, while Dustin and Max try to see who can dress the other in the ugliest outfit.

Time moves by slowly, but fifteen past five, El walks in. She’s true to his earlier description, still wearing her overalls with her hair untamed and her nose bleeding yet again. Mike instinctively reaches for a tissue from the box on the desk (he’s specifically bought it for El, but he doesn’t tell Mr. Newby that) and hands it to her.

“Hey,” he says softly, ignoring the urge to wipe her nose for her. This isn’t Holly, she definitely doesn’t need him wiping every single one of her nosebleeds.

“Hey!” she says brightly, but he hears the slight crack of nervousness in her tone—she certainly wasn’t expecting this place to have more than one other person, let alone his four friends.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “They wanted to meet you.  I told them they could stop by, since you normally come today. I hope that’s alright.”

She simply smiles, shoulders relaxing. “That’s fine,” and he believes her.

“So you’re Jane!” Dustin grins.

El blinks a few times before her smile broadens a little. “Yes, that’s right.”

Mike leans into her, whispering in her ear. “I didn’t know how much you wanted them to know about….” He trails off. Mike seeing her tattoo had been an accident, and while he loves that he’s given her a special nickname, he doesn’t know if she wants anyone else to call her _El_. When Holly was younger, her first word had actually been _“Ike”,_ and the nickname stuck. But it doesn’t mean he lets anyone else call him that.

“Thank you,” she whispers back. “What are all your names?” she asks, turning her attention to all his friends.

“I’m Lucas,” he introduces before going around the room. “That’s Will, Dustin, and…Little Red.”

Max rolls her eyes. “Max, actually,” she amends, giving her crooked smile. “Nice to meet you.”

El’s expression continues to morph into something less anxious as she looks at Max with something akin to wonderment. “I like your hair, it’s so pretty. I’ve never seen someone with that hair color.”

Confusion draws her brows together and she looks at Mike, confused. Thankful for his tall stature so that El can’t see him, he’s able to gesture not to dwell on it as he takes his hand and makes a cutting notion across his neck, mouthing _Later,_ hoping that’ll buy enough time for him to come up with a bullshit excuse as to why El might have never seen a redhead before.

“Yeah, no kidding. It’s preeeeetty fucking bright,” Lucas teases, bumping shoulders with his girlfriend. She bumps her fist playfully on top of his head.

“Not as bright as that jacket,” Dustin teases, pointing at the getup that he’s picked out for Max. She’s sporting a pair of orange bellbottoms and an ugly mustard floral print coat that doesn’t look completely unlike his aunt’s couch.  “God, it’s uglier on you than it was on the hanger.”

“You _dick.”_

She runs over to slug him but Dustin dodges as he laughs manically, managing to shove her in the dressing room and closing the worn curtain closed. “Jane!” Dustin cheers, gesturing for her to come over. El spares Mike a wary gaze but complies when he gives her an encouraging smile, meeting him by the few racks of clothes. “I saw a jacket I think would look cool on you.”

“Aw, come on,” Mike protests. “Don’t drag her into your ugly dress-up contest.”

“Ugly?” El questions, glancing at where Max is changing behind the curtain; they all hear her curse as she falls into the wall, struggling to change in the small space.

Max pokes her head out, hair frizzy and sticking up from static. “Wait, you _liked_ those?”

“No, I just….” She bites her lip. “I thought you liked them. I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“See!” Mike defends, “Nicer than Will. Those clothes are _ugly.”_

Max goes back into the dressing room just as Dustin drops a jacket, a t-shirt and a pair of jeans into El’s unsuspecting arms. “Okay. Try those on.”

“Um…” El looks down at the clothes with a frown. “I don’t….need clothes?”

“It’s just for fun,” Will says from his perch on the desk. He still hasn’t moved. “You don’t have to buy them or anything. We do it all the time.”

“Yeah! Ooh, here, try these too!” Lucas jumps in on the fun and picks out this _ugly_ looking pink dress and blue bomber jacket.

“Okay,” she agrees softly, eyeing the changing room. Max comes stumbling out, ugly clothes in hand and tosses them to Lucas who grumbles, but puts them away for her with the same wry smile he has just for her.

As soon as she’s out of sight, all three boys turn their heads and give Mike that same shit-eating grin.

“She’s pretty,” Dustin whispers, only it’s not that much of a whisper because Dustin doesn’t know how to whisper and El can probably hear them and Mike could _die._

“I know,” Mike whispers back.

“And nice,” Will agrees.

“I gotta say,” Max joins in. “She’s quiet, but she does seem cool. Not everyone can rock those nerdy overalls.”

A few minutes later, after everyone headed back to the book shelves to either hound Will on his comic book choices or Mike’s handyman skills, El remerges wearing the pink dress and blue jacket. It’s a strange contrast to her dirty white chucks and tube socks. But there’s something about it….something familiar.

“Dude!” Dustin laughs. “She looks _just_ like Holly’s favorite doll that she had a few years back.”

“She kinda does,” Will agrees with a soft smile. “Don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing,” he assures when El starts to look uncomfortable. “You look cute it’s just—“

“Please tell me you have a wig in this garbage can of a shop!” Dustin exclaims, nearly diving head first into a bin of miscellaneous hats, wigs, and other costume accessories. In seconds he pulls out a bleach blonde wig and runs over to put it on top of El’s head—it sits crooked, making her sputter as stringy, plastic-looking hair gets in her mouth as Dustin attempts to put it properly on her head. “There! Now you look just like Daisy.”

She blinks, twirling around to look at the mirror that’s leaning against the wall—it’s got a big crack in it, but it works well enough. “From the Great Gatsby?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, no, that’s just what Holly called the doll—but I dunno, maybe? Will, was Daisy blonde?”

“That….wasn’t a fact I retained for the test.”

“Bah, whatever. You look good!” Lucas assures.

Max pulls a face. “What? No. Babe, she looks ridiculous. Jane, you’re too cool for that stupid frilly dress. Go put on what Dustin picked out.”

El obeys, clearly looking a little uncomfortable in a dress judging by how she had been pulling on the hem. She seems to like the jacket though, giving herself a look in the mirror once more before she runs back into the dressing room. Max continues to tease Lucas on his fashion fail (“I can’t believe Dustin has better taste than you.” “He does not!” “Hey! I take offense”) as El changes and this time, when she remerges, the reaction is a lot stronger.

“Heyooooooo!” Dustin calls, letting out a whistle. “Look at you! You look _so cool!”_

El flusters under the attention, tugging at the oversized sleeves of the dark tweed jacket. “It’s too big.”

“Don Johnson it.”

Lucas rolls his eyes. “She’s not gonna _Don Johnson it.”_

“What? Why not? It’s cool.”

“What do you know about cool?”

“What is…..Don Johnsoning?” El asks.

Dustin pops open a bag of chips that Mike has no idea where he got. His friend is an endless source of snacks. “Just roll the sleeves up,” he tells her, mouth full of salt and vinegar chips. Suddenly the whole room smells kinda awful.

Max comes over and helps her and in the end, Dustin is right, again—she looks kind of cool.

“Now about your hair,” Dustin says, wiping his hands on his jeans. He goes to touch her hair, but Lucas slaps his hand away.

El looks hurt. “What’s wrong with my hair?” she asks, tentatively touching the curls.

“Nothing!” Mike blurts out. “Your hair is super cute.”

Dustin gives him a look that Mike knows means he’s going to pay for that sappy comment later. “Mike’s right,” he agrees, “It just needs to _match.”_

“Match,” she repeats slowly, clearly not following.

Dustin heads over to his backpack, continuing to wipe his greasy hands on his jeans and jacket, getting crumbs everywhere. Mike’s totally going to have to clean that up before close. “Now, this stays between us, got it? You _never_ saw this.”

He pulls out a container of hair gel and Farrah Fawcett Spray.

“Dude,” Lucas chuckles. “You actually listened to Steve?”

“It works!” he squawks in defense. “My hair is _luscious_.”

“Your hair is _ridiculous.”_

Dustin takes it all in stride. “Come here Jane, we’ll have you looking like Joan Jett in no time.”

Her eyes light up at that; Joan Jett is one of her favorites, Mike remembers that, second only to Stevie Nicks.  He finds it cute how she lets Dustin completely _annihilate_ her hair, flattening it and slicking it all back—the edges still curl a little at the end and it kind of looks like a baby mullet (adorable) and yeah, Dustin is right again. Even when he adds to Fawcett Spray. El looks cool. The hair really ties the look together and it’s all very—

“Bitchin!” Max shouts, letting out a loud whistle as she rummages through her bag. “I think I have some make up in my purse—“

“You own _make up?”_  Will asks.

“You own a _purse_?” Lucas adds on.

El shares a secret smile with Mike. “How bitchin,” she mumbles, but no one really hears it; no one but Mike.

The next few minutes are beyond comical as Max and Dustin fight over trying to apply some eye shadow with Lucas attempting to put in input but getting ignored. In the end all three of them ask for Will’s opinion and he ends up just laughing.

“Damn! You look very punk.”

“Yeah baby!” Dustin croons. “Work it! Joan Jett would _kill_ to look like you!”

“Will, get your camera. Jane, strike a pose.”

She looks at Mike for help, clearly at a loss. Deciding he can’t just put her on the spot alone like that, Mike rushes over to pick up that ugly-ass floral coat and tosses it around his shoulders as well as put on a pair of comically large sunglasses. He gets the whole gang laughing as he takes a note from Holly’s book and strikes a ridiculous pose—but it works. El starts to play along and before he knows it they’re running around the room picking up various things (and breaking. Oops.) to take pictures with. They end up getting so silly that Mike’s thankful that no one comes in to actually shop and he doesn’t even mind that he starts to lock up an hour after close.

As they’re all winding down, cheeks flushed and bellies aching with laughter, Will catches sight of the tattoo on El’s wrist as she’s fiddling with her sleeves. “What’s that?”

She goes pale _immediately,_ and Mike’s heart sinks. She did okay with just Mike but four new people are a lot to share that information with. So he tries to help, think of a lie. “It’s just—“

“—a tattoo,” El admits, face still a little pale.

“Wait, _really?”_ Max asks, reaching over to touch it. She flinches away and Max gets the hint, taking a large step back. “Which parlor did you get it done at? Are you eighteen or did you find someone because Jennifer Hayes said that there’s someone who—“

“Oh, uh, no,” El shakes her head pulling her wrist back; but she doesn’t roll down the sleeve. “I got it years ago but it’s….kind of a long story.”

“What does _011_ mean?” Will asks kindly, looking interested, non-judgmental and as kind as ever.

She hesitates, opening and closing her mouth repeatedly before she ends up staring at the ground and scuffing the floor with her shoes. “It….I—“

“El, you don’t have to,” Mike mumbles, reaching over to put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze.

“El?” Dustin questions, brow drawn together.

“Yeah, El,” she says looking up—with one smile Mike’s way, she already looks less nervous. “It’s short for Eleven,” she holds up her wrist, showing the tattoo. “That’s….that was my name. Before I was adopted.”

Max frowns. “So your name isn’t Jane?”

“No, it is,” she shakes her head. “I just….I’m still getting used to it. I was never called that, I was Eleven for years. El is….a nice compromise. Halfway happy. Mike came up with it.”

Dustin looks _elated._ “Did he now?”

He blushes to the tips of his ears. “Yeah. I did,” he mumbles.

“Do you want us to call you El?” Lucas asks.

She looks around, giving each of his friends—her friends, too, he suspects—a look over and a custom tailored smile.

“Yeah. You can call me El.”

Mike realizes that El is a nickname she’s reserving for her friends—and all in all, that’s pretty bitchin’.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, when she stops by the junk shop just to see him, he hands her a large shopping bag.

“What’s this?” she asks, voice muffled as she rummages through the sack only to pull out the punk outfit that she had tried on before, as well as the blue jacket she had over the pink dress.

“That’s from all of us,” Mike mumbles, coughing into his hand. It’s a half-truth; they did all pitch in for the outfit, but Mike bought the jacket all on his own. Not that he’d admit it anytime soon.  “We thought you looked cool and—“

She cuts him off with a small peck to his lips.

“Thank you.” She smiles. “It’ll look good with the black nail polish.”

He can’t argue with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to b99 for the don johnson reference.  
> also fun fact I base the junk shop after an actual junk shop in my town.  
> me and alcohol made a lot of bad decisions this week!! so!! I wrote this to distract myself. please distract me from my life tell me what you think!!!!! give me one shot requests, no promises, but I'll do what I can. have a good one my friends.


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